2006/ Feb 5. I am lying on the floor of the Orlando airport, ready to kiss the sky with excitement.
2006/ Feb 13. It is a quarter till twelve. I woke up to Doña Rosa and that asshole fighting again. He was slamming her up against the corrugated metal wall and it echoed into my side of the barn. What the fuck am I doing here? I have a head full of cocaine and I’m still drunk from last night. This is the most awkward, insecure trip I’ve ever taken. And this is the most awkward, insecure place I’ve ever had to call a home. I don’t trust Doña Rosa or any of the crack heads she deals with. Fuck, I don’t even trust the walls or the ceiling of this place. Clearly, this is not what I’d planned on; the ants in my bed, the spiders in my room, too much sun, no income whatsoever, living in a fucking barn, no one at all to trust. Am I hitting rock bottom? Am I giving up? And wouldn’t it be so much easier to go home? To the air conditioning and the bed and the couch and the kitchen… and we always have so much cheese and yogurt; I have a car and… ohh that house. An American home is like a fortress. Isn’t it? A house without insects or snakes. A house with walls and a sealed roof. But… if I go home… will I have failed? What if I never live abroad again?
2006/ Feb 18. Today, as I ran from Nicaraguan thugs, holding nothing but a boogie board and swim fins, shoeless and penniless, it occurred to me, that this is the first time my carelessness has been a true nuisance. As I walked through a town I’d never wanted to see, to a bed in a barn, to a lonely night, fantasizing about a sixteen-year-old waitress, it occurred to me that I really should have planned better. On this trip, I missed good sights, I wasted days and slept through buses, all because I’m unorganized and lazy. In fact, this whole trip was wasted because I didn’t plan better. This trip cost me over 1500 dollars, not to mention another 3500 because of that fucking strip club, I had to beg my parents for a ticket home, and I am going home with a sunburn, an empty wallet, and an “I told you so.”
And the funny part, is that I am pretty happy with the way things turned out. In fact, I’m sure something similar will happen again. The blessing/ curse of a naïve, non-committing, emotionless, relaxed guy, is that I’ve been the cause of infinite stress and anger, but I’m not stressed or angry… ever!
I learned that my heart belongs to the ocean and that my heart belongs speaking Spanish, but those aren’t ALL my heart needs to survive. I learned that I really do enjoy warm showers and cement and that I fucking hate insects; that I could lay on the sand for hours, but there is such thing as too much sun. I am not as tough or gruff as I had thought, I hate rich spoiled gringos, but must be one once in a while. I choose cities and people over nature and plants, life would be better with parrots everywhere. I trust smart, rich people over poor, dumb people. I like just about any food involving meat and that I am both weaker and stronger than I’d thought. That life is infinite experience and experience is infinite happiness.
2006/ Feb 23. When I travel, I am constantly thanking God, for my experiences, for my ability to get through tough situations, for the beauty that I encounter and for the successful wrap-up and return to family and friends.
When we find ourselves appreciating God often, that must be our calling, our true passion. Matt= travel, ocean. Those who do not know God have not found happiness.
2006/ Jun 26. I am starting to feel more and more at home in airports. People of so many colors, all dancing around one another… holding our bags as if they contained oxygen, or love. Don’t we love to dig through our bags? What will I pull out next? Ipod? Book? Magazine? Sweatshirt? Should I call someone? Who will I call? I’ll act annoyed and impatient… but aren’t I happy? And won’t I be happy when our conversation is interrupted by a flight announcement? That’ll show ‘em… I shake, I move, I am strong and flexible… I am unfuckingstopable!
2006/ Jun 27. I am sitting in the back row (I hate the back row) of a metal Hot Tamale; we’re traveling at close to the speed of sound, and the flight attendant is passing out Cup-o-Noodles with disposable, wooden chopsticks. To my right is a Taiwanese student, returning from a semester abroad at ASU. She says, “oooh” and “ahh” as we talk, meaning she doesn’t understand me, or could car less what I was saying to her. She falls asleep once in a while, and accidentally leans on me or rubs against me. It feels nice, it feels soft and human. Am I a pervert? I imagine us under the thin airplane blanket, cuddling. She is not attractive and we are not alone, I’d keep it Christian, but surely this would help the flight go by faster. When the dinner comes, I notice that she’s pretty bad with a fork and knife… I guess that makes sense. Those people.
2006/ Jul 17. We went to a huge Taoist, (was it Taoist? Was it Buddhist? Are those the same?) I think it was Taoist, temple yesterday…it may as well have been Mecca… Hundreds of people, rushing in and out, many were tourists, but most seemed to be “real people” most seemed to know what they were doing there. I didn’t know what I was doing there. They have the most intricate, peculiar system of prayer… bowing with incense brought to the forehead… murmuring to their God(s)… a routine that puzzled me. During all of this, a Buddhist/ meditational chant was bellowing throughout the temple, laying a soundtrack on the whole experience.
I quickly sensed a familiar feeling; the same as my time at the Wailing Wall, the same when I sat through Forest Gump, surrounded by hundreds of sobbing women… The feeling of- this location is not special or significant to me, nor do I understand where this emotion is coming from but it is a special place to so many people, and that energy is tangible, that love and emotion is putting a buzz in the air. And that I can understand easily. I felt something so strong at that moment. This defiance of all logic. A huge, “Why am I here?” swept over me, smacked me, brought me to my knees.
Weeks ago, after she finished church, I asked Beth, “Was it fun?” And she looked at me like I was retarded… for asking such a question, “Is everything fun?” She snapped.
And in this temple, I saw it, the love, and the emotion, knocked on my ass… Is fun really my true goal? Is there a better answer? Where could it be? And on which nameless day will it appear? And looking back at this moment, I am convinced that there is no answer hiding under a rock or around a corner.
I perched myself on a small stoop and watched in awe… the people, the children, the eyes and beating hearts. People concentrating and praying, others laughing and jabbering in foreign tongues, families on guided tours and children screaming and running. I saw all of their souls rising up, combing with the thick, white incense smoke and resting above their heads… their souls were dancing. The lines between fist, second and third person seemed to burn up as well. The lines between each soul had dissolved! Could that be the truth… is our skin, (let’s not even start with color, though I could be really on to something with that) this arbitrary shell that separates us… could it be hindering the truth?
Then, as if on command, it started to rain. A light rain, the kind that feels so good, you must thank God for your skin… each receptor, accepting its new job, both excited and puzzled- “I didn’t expect to work today.” And right there, I had one of those moments… those rare… everything I thought I knew means shit… moments… the sheer magnitude of sensation and 100 percent infiltration of love and life and beauty- entering through every pore, every orifice and dendrite and so on… Is this really happening? What have I done to deserve this moment? What a blessing life is!
I stood in the rain and, this rain of ecstasy, and I looked at all these faces and wanted to cry. For all the passion and energy that could be going to waste… for all those who don’t get any of this… for all the love and human connection that is realized and all that isn’t… for the sheer magnitude of this world and all that it entails.
2007 Jan 27. Though I am not enough of a prick to ever say I hate a whole race o ethnicity, I am pretty sure that in the past I had hated Chinese people.
2007 Aug 14. I will remember Cambodia for women walking around in their pajamas, for prostitutes spilling out of their shacks at night, for lines and lines and crowded streets of tuk-tuks and moto’s, for naked children playing on the side of the road, playing in mud puddles and garbage heaps, for little kids on big bikes and old men on little bikes, for dirt and dust and black exhaust in the air, for the endless green fields and forests that never changed, but never ceased to amaze me, for a Russian sex tourist and my French friends. I’ll remember Cambodia because every local I met had a sad story for a waitress who made US 50 dollars per month and knew that she was blessed to have that, I’ll remember feeling completely helpless in Cambodia; it was here that I accepted poverty and starvation, suffering and hell are as tied to this planet as water and mountains. Inevitable truths. I’ll remember the strong feeling that activism and devotion to a cause may be the only way for me to ever live in peace with myself, while simultaneously feeling that I’ll never do anything substantial to help any of the world’s problems.
Unlike most tourist destinations, Cambodia doesn’t even have the recourses to hide its shortcomings. Poverty is not an issue affecting a few people, it is not an issue affecting half the people… it is the status quo… Cambodians are poor and hungry; that’s all there is too it. The rich (people with strong homes, clothes and a car) are 2 or 3 percent.
I’ll remember repeatedly asking myself, “Why doesn’t someone rob me? I’ve got 6 months worth of their salaries in my pockets, another year if you count my ipod or camera.”
I’ll remember Cambodia for the love that they gave each other. I’ll remember that I saw more locals than foreigners helping out the beggars.
2007/ Aug 22. I feel so blessed to have stumbled upon this country. I will never cease to be amazed, at how life can turn us, trick us, plans go to shit and expectations come crashing down, but just as easily, we can be blindsided by great things. I’ve been in Laos for ten days now and I can’t even count the number of times I’ve stopped to say, “I’m truly happy.”
I knew that traveling was interesting, eye-opening and life-changing, but it wasn’t until Laos, that I remembered it could also be FUN… I cannot thank God enough for my experience here. Every backpacker, sex tourist, package tourist I meet.. we all know… WE ARE THE LUCKIEST PEOLE IN THE WORLD!!!!
2007/ Aug 26. More and more, it seems to me that poverty and hardship will always plague the world, that they move around a little, but people always suffer. I suppose my new dream, is that we can-at least spare children from this pain. Six-year-old children shouldn’t have to work all day and shouldn’t have to go hungry or thirsty. And women should not be sold as sex slaves.
I’ll remember Kanae as my “Mini Haley.” I liked her… I felt comfortable with her. She made my time more enjoyable. Who knows if I’ll see her again…
2008/ Feb 6. I have pretty much given up on checking luggage. If at all possible, I carry everything on. I fear that they’ll lose/ break something, and then it occurs to me I trust these people with my life, but not with my dirty socks and underwear!
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